Act Against Torture - Photo Gallery

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photo gallery - 28 September 2006

On Sept 28, 2006, the culminating day of the Week of Action called by the organization Declaration of Peace, Act Against Torture and friends dressed in orange jumpsuits and T-shirts, and attempted to deliver a near-life-sized Guantanamo cage to California Senators Feinstein and Boxer, and to San Francisco's Representative Pelosi, to dramatize and demand an end to the reprehensible torture and indefinite detention that our legislators have enabled or failed to prevent over the past five years at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Abu Ghraib in Iraq, Bagram AFB in Afghanistan, and in secret prisons and other torture-sites all over the world. Though Senator Feinstein's staff would not schedule an appointment on the date we requested, we appeared at her San Francisco office and requested that an aide meet us at the entrance to the building to receive a press packet and other materials. Though an aide indicated she would do so over the telephone, she did not appear and a follow-up call revealed that she had capriciously changed her mind. The staff of Rep. Pelosi and Sen. Boxer honored the appointments they made to meet with members of Act Against Torture, but were not receptive to the suggestion that their respective bosses could do a great deal more than they have in the way of exercising leadership in opposition to the Bush administration's flagrant disregard for truth, indifference to justice, and embrace of amorality. The date was chosen long before it became apparent that it would be the same day the Senate voted on Senate Bill 3930, a bill that the New York Times, in its editorial of that morning, described as "ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws - while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists." Chastising Republicans for caving into "fear of losing their majority" in throes of "mindless politics of [the upcoming] midterm elections", and Democrats who chose to "betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads," the NYT enumerated seven of the most egregious flaws in the bill, including its repudiation of the Geneva Conventions; the jettisoning of habeus corpus, a fundamental legal right enshrined in Anglo-American jurisprudence for eight hundred years; incorporating definitions of torture so narrow they "effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture"; and its allowance of coerced evidence (obtained through torture) into legal procedings. After the House passed its version of this bill (HR 6166) the day before our action, it became apparent that the Senate vote would occur the day we had planned to demand an end to torture; AAT therefore decided to call on California's senators to filibuster the bill. They did not do so. The Senate voted 65 - 34 to approve the Military Commissions Act of 2006. As Rep. Pelosi had the day before, Senators Feinstein and Boxer voted against the bill. Our site's photos follow. Additional photos have been posted on-line at flickr.com by Jim Haber and Ed Rudolph.

	AAT called for the action to begin at 8:30 am at Montgomery BART. 1 Post Street, where Sen. Feinstein maintains her San Francisco office, is in the background.

	While waiting for Feinstein's office to open, orange-suited "prisoners" marched the cage around the crosswalks at Montgomery & Market.

	The shrouded "prisoner" was renditioned off the street while commuters streamed out from the BART station.

	The cage was decorated with orange ribbon as a "gift" for Senator Feinstein as excerpts from the morning's NY Times editorial was read (and editorialized upon).

	The security detail at the door to Feinstein's office building was less than thrilled at the prospect of AAT's cage sullying their elevator.

	After AAT was refused entrance, a meeting on the sidewalk was hastily arranged with staff in Feinstein's office. After agreeing to accept written materials, however, the Senator's aide unilaterally decided to blow off the rabble on the sidewalk.

	Thwarted by the ever-unresponsive Feinstein, AAT and friends headed up Market Street toward the Federal Building, where Pelosi's staff was waiting.

	The San Francisco Center, a newly-expanded temple to commodity fetishism, was holding opening-day ceremonies at Powell and Market. We decided to check in, to see if anyone there thought that putting a stop to torture mattered more than shopping.

	Though a few shoppers and onlookers cheered us on, the management of the center was about as thrilled as the security squad at 1 Post Street to have AAT on their premises. We moved along before things got dicey.

	Holding banners on the federal building plaza.

	Rep. Pelosi's staff declined AAT's offer to meet inside the cage.

	Three AAT members were permitted to enter the Federal Building to meet with Pelosi's staff in the Hawaii Room.

	The rest waited.

	After emerging from the meeting, AAT representatives explained that they'd heard a great deal about what Rep. Pelosi has already done (e.g., voted against H.R. 6166 and demanded Rumsfeld's resignation), but little about how the House Minority Leader would commit to inpsiring genuine, effective opposition to the government's policies of torture and indefinite detention.

	At Senator Boxer's office across town (after disassembling and reassembling the cage, which couldn't be fit whole through an F-trolly's entrance door), her aides were likewise unwilling to meet inside the AAT cage.

	Another group went in to try to talk sense to Senator Boxer's staff. Again, the rest waited outside.

	And waited...

	Finally - and empty-handed as the Senate voted to pass the Military Commisions Act of 2006 - AAT began its trek homeward, down the Embarcadero.

	We'll be back.